


I'm Always Tired but Never of You

by PleaseDontGetMeRescued



Series: For Chance to Dream [2]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Brief mentions of funny business but no actual funny business, Cuddling, F/M, Fluff, I wasn't finished with sleepy Lumax so here you go, Once again the author is overly fond of italics, You don't have to have read As Shuts the Rose to understand this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-13 00:18:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13558668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PleaseDontGetMeRescued/pseuds/PleaseDontGetMeRescued
Summary: Max never gets a better sleep than she does when she’s in Lucas’ room.-Or, Max and Lucas are in love and like to cuddle.





	I'm Always Tired but Never of You

(June 1985)

Max never gets a better sleep than she does when she’s in Lucas’ room.  In the three months since her freak out at El’s, Max finds herself at the Sinclair’s more often than not.  It’s a lot of traveling back and forth and climbing in and out of windows, but it’s always worth it to get a few hours of blissful, uninterrupted sleep.

The Sinclair’s house is quiet, unlike her own.  It’s peaceful, unlike her own.  And it’s warm.  The shitty insulation at her house struggles to keep out the nighttime chill, but Lucas’ house is always warm and comfortable when she’s curled up at his side.  She reminds herself of this fact as she hurries along the dark path from her house to his.  It may be summer but without the sun the night is still uncomfortably cold.  The wind is biting and sends goosebumps up her arms and legs.

Soon, she tells herself.  Soon she’ll be warm and cozy and well on her way to unconsciousness.  She can’t wait.

Lucas always leaves his small bedside lamp on for her.  She can see it shining through the window from the street down below.  She doesn’t come over every night, but she knows he leaves the light on for her anyway, just in case.

He also leaves the window unlocked.

It’s easy enough to climb up and through his window.  Even with the frigid wind blowing he leaves it cracked open just a bit so that she can get her fingers under the ledge.  Max swings her legs over the sill and shuts the window firmly behind her.  She's always careful not to make any noise so she doesn't wake up the Sinclairs.  For as much as they seem to love her, she doubts they’d be happy about her sneaking into their house several times a week.

Lucas is curled up on his side facing away from her.  Max slips off her shoes and jacket, pushes her windblown hair away from her face, and pulls down the blankets to settle in beside him.  She lays on her side with her hands folded under her cheek and closes her eyes, waiting for sleep to come.

The house is quiet and warm, just like she knew it’d be, but she still can’t settle down.  She tosses and turns for a few minutes trying to find a comfortable position.

Eventually, Lucas groans and rolls over to face her.  With his eyes still closed he presses his forehead to hers and wraps an arm around her shoulders.  “Relax,” he mumbles.  He hisses as Max’s cold hands make contact with his skin.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay.  Just go to sleep.”

She shifts in his hold for a moment, but having Lucas right there next to her relaxes her enough that soon her eyes feel droopy and her brain tired.

She’ll have to get up early and sneak out before either of their parents realize she’s not where she’s supposed to be, but she knows Lucas has already thought ahead and set his alarm clock to wake her.

With that thought in mind, her eyes slip closed and the night dissolves into a dreamy haze.

-

(August 1986)

Max has been gone for 3 weeks.  20 days in California spending time with her dad.  Lucas feels like his brain is melting away with how much he misses her.  But she calls every few days and Lucas revels at the opportunity to hear her voice, even if it is obscured by static.

But she’s coming home today.  She’s coming home today and Lucas feels like he’s going to explode if he doesn’t see her as soon as physically possible.  This has been the longest 3 weeks of his life.  So he sits on the front steps of his house, leg bouncing excitedly, and waits.

Finally, _finally,_ she rolls up on her skateboard as the sun is just starting to dip in the sky.  She’s tanner than he’s ever seen her before, even more freckled, and absolutely gorgeous.  She hops off of her skateboard, sending it careening off in the opposite direction, and leaps directly into his waiting arms.

Her skin is warm and she plants her face heavily on his shoulder.  “Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” he says into her hair.  It’s thrown up into the messiest bun he’s ever seen, held in place with a scrunchie.  Her jeans and t-shirt are wrinkled and the flannel tied around her waist looks like it’s seen better days.  She smells kind of stale, fresh off a 4-hour flight and long car ride.  Still, he squeezes her closer, practically lifting her off the ground.  “Did you come straight here?”

“What can I say?  Maybe I missed your stupid face.”

“Well obviously,” he teases, pressing a brief kiss to her lips.  “Come on.  Mom made cookies.  Have you eaten?”

“Yeah, in the car.  I’d die for a cookie though.  I definitely missed your mom’s baking more than I missed you.”

“That’s fair.”

Lucas drags her by the hand into the house and through the kitchen.  They grab some cookies, make small talk with Lucas’ mom, and finally move to settle down on the couch for a movie.

Lucas puts on _The Goonies_ and collapses on the couch, finally able to relax now that Max is here.  She scoots over and sits directly next to him, holding his hand and throwing her legs over his lap.

They munch on cookies for a while until they’re both full.  The movie drags on in the background as they talk about her trip.  Going to the pier with her dad, surfing, skating, swimming.  Basically all of the super cool things that Lucas could never imagine doing himself.  Maybe one day he’ll be able to visit California with her.

Eventually, they settle into silence and Max falls back against the length of the couch, laying with her legs still over Lucas’ lap.  Before long the Goonies are discovering One-Eyed Willy’s treasure.

Lucas peaks down at Max to see her reaction, only to find her passed out against the couch pillows.  Her mouth is open and she has dark circles under her eyes.  Lucas contemplates waking her up so she doesn’t miss her favorite part of the movie but decides against it.  She must be exhausted from a full day of travel and jet lag.  He’ll let her sleep.

Even passed out like this, Lucas thinks, she’s still good company.

-

(January 1989)

She’s honestly disappointed more than anything.  Sure, her head feels like it’s splitting apart and her ribs ache something fierce, but she can’t focus on that right now.  All she can think about it her poor car.  The car that she’s been saving money up for years.  The car that’s now totally ruined and waiting to be towed off somewhere off of Interstate 69.

It wasn’t her fault though.  She’s a good driver.  A _careful_ driver, despite what her friends like to say.   And she’s been in Hawkins for four years now.  She knows how to drive in the snow and ice.  Apparently, not everybody is as capable as she is, though, seeing as some idiot had smash right into her, t-boning her beautiful newly purchased car, and rammed her off the highway into the median.

She’d lost consciousness, which was scary, but her first thought upon waking to the horrible grinding metal noise of the firefighters ripping the ruined door off of her precious car was “fuck this is going to be expensive.”  Or at least, that was her first thought after registering the horrible pain all over her body.

Luckily, unlike her car, there isn’t too much physical damage to her person.  A concussion, some bruised ribs, and some burns from the force of the airbag deploying.  Thankfully no broken nose.  It is sore though.  Everything is.

She’s been in the ER for a few hours and her meds are starting to wear off.  And she’s bored.  There’s a baby screaming a few beds over and an old man walking around with his hospital gown completely open in the back.  Nurses and doctors rush from bed to bed working on the higher priority patients.  Max wants more drugs.

Sometime later a nurse bustles in with a clipboard and an overly friendly smile.  “We’re moving you to a room for the night, hon.  The doc wants to keep you for observation.  Still can’t reach your folks, though.”

“That’s because they’re out of town.  I told you.”  Beyond frustrated, Max can’t help the snippiness in her voice.  The nurse either doesn’t recognize the hostility or is simply used to it.  She unlocks the wheels to the hospital bed and starts to push Max down the hall.

“Do you have any other family in town that could come be with you for a bit?”

“No.”  The second Billy had turned 18 he’d fucked off to who knows where.  He’d barely waited long enough to graduate before he disappeared.  And, even if he was still in town, Max doubts he would show up when she needed him to.

“Well, I hate to see you here all by yourself.  Who else can I call for you?  Your friends?”

Max has been dreading this.  She was hoping she would get discharged sooner rather than later and just not mention the accident to anyone until absolutely necessary.  Lucas would be a worried mess, sure to lecture her about how _“you need to be careful, Max”_ and _“what if it’d been worse, Max?”_

She knows he only worries because he loves her, but the incessant hovering is simultaneously frustrating and adorable.

“Can you call my boyfriend?”  She tells the nurse Lucas’ name and rattles off the phone number she’s had memorized since she was 14.

The nurse wheels Max into a single room, locks the wheels on the bed, and scribbles down the information with a “sure thing, hon.”  She sweeps out of the room in a blur of green scrubs.

Max groans.  She forgot to ask for more meds.

She lets her mind wander for a while but her body is throbbing so she can’t force herself to fall asleep.

Eventually, she hears the rushed squeak of sneakers against the linoleum floor and just knows that any second Lucas will burst through the door in a panic.

Sure enough, he stumbles through the door over untied shoelaces and releases a relieved exhale so ridiculous Max can practically feel it on her face.

“Hey,” she says, grinning at how absolutely adorable he is.

“Jesus.”  His voice is pretty wrecked as he settles himself down on the edge of her bed and presses his face into her hair.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”  She grabs his hand.

“Really?  Because you’re doing that thing with your face that you always do when you’re in pain.”  He traces his finger between her eyebrows gently.  Max makes a conscious effort to relax her face.  Lucas pins her with his patented Don’t-Try-to-Fool-Me look and Max sighs.

“Okay fine.  The drugs have definitely worn off and I’m a kinda sore, but it’s really not that terrible.”

Lucas runs the gentlest of touches along the burns on her face.  “I’ll get the nurse.”

While he’s gone Max takes the opportunity to slide herself down further in the bed while he’s not there to see her wince in pain.  By the time he comes back with the nurse in tow Max has managed to school her face back into a neutral expression.

“Sorry about that, hon,” the nurse says, handing Max a tiny cup of pain pills and switching out her IV bag for a full, fresh one.  “I should’ve realized you’d need more by now.”  Lucas takes the seat next to the bed and reaches for Max’s hand again.  “Those should kick in in just a bit.”  The nurse pats Max’s arm and takes her leave.

The room falls silent except for the quiet beeping of the heart rate monitor.  Lucas’ face is pinched.

“Hey,” Max says, squeezing his hand.  “I’m okay.  Really.”

“I know,” he mutters.

“I’m honestly more worried about my car-”

Lucas’ eye roll is so exaggerated Max is surprised his eyes don’t get stuck up inside his head.  “You would be.”  Max laughs but stops abruptly to wince at the pain in her ribs.  “You should rest.”

“I’m not tired.”  But she is.  The drugs are starting to move through her body and she’s beginning to feel sluggish.

Lucas gives her The Look again and says, “yes, you are.”  He pulls the blankets up around her further.  “Rest.”  Max nods and settles further into the bed.  Her mind is starting to shut off as she drifts off to sleep, but she’ll take every opportunity to stare at Lucas.  He smiles and shakes his head when he catches her starting.  “Close your eyes and go to sleep, MadMax.”

She does.

-

(November 1989)

Lucas has missed Max before.  Whenever she went to California to visit her family, when he traveled the country touring colleges, and even sometimes just in the few hours between when they said goodbye at night until they said hello the next morning.

So he thought he knew what it would feel like to be away from her for months on end when they went off not just to different colleges, but colleges on opposite sides of the country.

Of course, he has always known that Max was going to go to college in California.  The USC flag had been hanging on her bedroom wall since the day she’d moved to Hawkins.  Lucas had entertained the idea of going there too, even going so far as to apply.  But when his acceptance letter came from MIT Lucas knew there was no way he could turn down his dream school - and Max would surely kick his ass for even thinking about it.

The pair had mutually decided that they could handle being away from each other for a few months at a time.  It wouldn’t be easy, but they’d already survived demodogs, the mind flayer, and racist, abusive step-brothers.  They could do this.

But the first several months were more difficult than either of them had anticipated.  Between classes, work, and roommates who constantly hogged the damn phone, they didn’t get to speak nearly as much as they’d have liked.  So it was nothing short of divine intervention when they found out both of their families were spending Thanksgiving out of town and didn’t expect them to come home.  Instead, Max booked a roundtrip ticket to Cambridge and would stay the long weekend in Lucas’ shitty little dorm room.

Lucas picks her up from the airport on Tuesday afternoon.  Classes let out earlier that morning for both of them and Max was booked on the first flight out of LAX to Logan International.  The airport is a madhouse what with everyone trying to get out of town for the holiday.  Lucas parks in the short-term lot and meets Max at her gate.  The second she sees him waiting for her she’s sprinting at him and leaping into his arms.  Lucas is more than prepared for that greeting and is sure to bend his knees to absorb her weight when it hits.

Jesus, he’s missed her so much.  They’re too busy hugging and laughing to even get a proper kiss in there at the gate.  But they make up for it by making out for half an hour before starting the drive back to campus.

They get pizza and play video games in the student center.  The campus has mostly cleared out by now so only a few stragglers linger at the tables around them.  By the time they head back to the room it’s nearly seven and already dark.

Lucas’ roommate is still there, staying one more night before taking off in the morning.  For all Lucas has told her about him, Max still isn’t prepared for the utter douchebaggery that is Trent Voorheis.  Immediately upon hearing the door open, Trent is yelling out, “Where ya been, loser?” and Max’s jaw instantly clenches.  Only she’s allowed to call Lucas a loser.  “Oh,” Trent says when he turns around and spots her.

“Trent, this is my girlfriend Max.” Lucas gestures to her and Trent reaches out to shake her hand.  Max returns the gesture begrudgingly.  She does not smile.

“Damn, Sinclair.  She’s definitely not what I pictured.”

“ _She’s_ right here,” Max says at the same time Lucas says “What is that supposed to mean.”  Naturally, Trent ignores Max.

“I just figured she’d be some hag or a freak like you.  Definitely not-” Trent gestures up and down at Max as if to say _all of this._

“How do you know I’m not?”

“Damn, okay.  So where do you go to school, Max?”

“USC,” she says tersely.  Lucas can tell Max wants Trent to leave.  He’s annoying her.

“Damn.”  Her jaw clenches. Lucas can tell Max wants Trent to stop saying damn.  “Hippie town, huh?”

“Well, I grew up there, so-”

Trent is moving around the room, trying on multiple shirts and spraying himself down with a cloud of cologne.  “Thought you and Sinclair grew up in Hicksville, Indiana together.”

Max balls her hand into a fist.  Lucas can tell she wants to punch Trent.  Instead, she says “What do you study, Trent?”

“Double major in Bio and Brain and Cognitive Sciences.  None of that fake science shit Sinclair here studies.”

Max gapes.  Is this guy for real?  Lucas can tell Max is forcing herself not to fight him.  “So you’re gonna be a doctor?  I’m studying Physical Therapy.”

“Well,” Trent says, ruffling his douchey blond fringe.  “We can’t all be smart enough to be surgeons, now can we, carrot top?”  He winks at her.  He actually winks at her and Lucas is beyond impressed when Max simply grinds her teeth so hard he can practically hear it.  Her glare is so severe he’s surprised she doesn’t have a headache already.  “Alright, I’m outta here.  Get your funny business over here by the time I’m back, yeah?”

As soon as the door slams shut behind him Max collapses onto Lucas’ bed with an enraged groan.  “You are so lucky I didn’t fight him.”

“I’m proud of you.”

They spend the night watching movies and messing around and getting their funny business out of the way before Trent gets back.  It’s nearing two in the morning when he finally stumbles back in so drunk he doesn’t even seem to notice Max and Lucas are there.  The lights are off but Max is still only in a sports bra and some sweatpants while Lucas dons only a pair of boxers.  Still, Trent merely flops face down on his bed and passes out, jeans and boots still on.

Max presses her face firmly into Lucas’ chest to stifle her laughter as Lucas hushes her.  “Don’t wake him up,” he scolds.  “Sleeping Trent is by far the most bearable Trent.”

“I don’t know.  I feel like dead Trent would be better.”

“Alright, I think you’ve planned enough murders for one lifetime.”

“Agree to disagree.  Besides, I’ve only ever planned one and it was for a good reason.”

“While I agree Billy breaking your skateboard was rude, I’m not sure it justifies murder.”

Max rolls her eyes.  “Hopper would have let me get away with it and you know it.”

“Not the point.”  Lucas thinks for a moment.  “Also not even true.  Hopper never let any of us get away with anything.  Remember that time he caught us drinking in the woods and tried to arrest until El begged him not to?  Or that time he found out Dustin was ditching school to try and beat your Dig Dug record at the arcade and got him detention for two weeks straight?

“Ha. Well, Dustin deserved that,” Max laughs, smothering the noise against her hand.  Lucas chuckles at the memory of Dustin missing two weeks of arcade time, only to come back to find that Max had already surpassed her previous record twice in the time he was gone.

“What about that time he caught El and Mike making out behind the movie theatre and flipped his shit?”  Max gasps, trying to keep her laughter as silent as possible.

“Or that time sophomore year when Steve let us borrow his car to go to Indianapolis for that concert but Chief didn’t want El to go so he reported the car as stolen and put out a BOLO on us?”

They go back and forth reminiscing about their high school shenanigans until their laughter gets too loud and Trent grumbles from the other side of the room.  The pair falls silent abruptly, sobering.

“I really miss them,” Max says, referring to their friends.

“Me too.”  Lucas smoothes his hand down her hair the way he knows soothes her.  “But only a month until Christmas and then we’ll all be together again.”

“Yeah,” Max agrees sadly. She yawns, sending a burst of warm breath against Lucas’ skin.  The clock on the bedside table reads 3:30 a.m.  “We should go to sleep.  It’s late.”

Max hums in agreement and pushes herself closer to him.  “Night, Stalker.”

Lucas kisses her head and closes his eyes.  With her next to him for the first time in a long time, he rests easy.

-

(September 1994)

“Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,” Lucas rushes, grabbing Max’s wrist before she can step through the doorway of their shitty apartment.

“Wha- _ah_!”  Her word fades into a shriek of surprise as Lucas lifts her into his arms and steps across the threshold.

“We’ve gotta do this right,” he says, kicking the door shut behind them.

“Don’t you dare drop me.”  Max plants a kiss on his cheek as he carries her down the hall towards their room.  “Wouldn’t that be just the thing?  Spending our wedding night in the emergency room with a broken bone?”

“I’m not gonna drop you.”  Lucas rolls his eyes and places her feet back on the ground.  “See?  Gentle.”

Max hums, keeping her arms wrapped firmly around his neck and leaning in for a long kiss.  “Unzip me, would ya?  This thing has been digging into me for hours.”

Lucas spins her, pushes all of her hair over one shoulder and plants kiss at the nape of her neck.  He trails soft hands down her shoulders and along the open back of her dress.  The house is cold.  They haven’t been home all day so the heat hasn’t been on.  That’s not what makes her shiver.

He undoes the zip on her dress and Max sucks in a grateful lungful of air.  Lucas slips his arms inside the undone torso of her dress and feels along the angry red marks the boning left along her ribcage.  He pulls her back so they pressed flush together and kisses her ear.  “Hey,” he says.

“Hey.”

“We’re married.”

“I know,” Max laughs, craning her neck to speak the words against his lips.  “I was there, remember?”

“I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Max steps out of her dress and throws an oversized t-shirt on.  Lucas strips down too as they make their way towards the bathroom.  They move in tandem around the single sink in the bathroom as Max clips her hair away from her face to wash off the makeup, and Lucas brushes his teeth.

It has been an incredibly long day.  The ceremony had been small, at a local venue in Indianapolis with only their family, the party, and the party’s parents and siblings.  It was nothing too fancy, but absolutely perfect.  They’d both agreed they’d rather come home to their own apartment than stay in a hotel for the night, a decision they were both extremely happy with as they fall into the comfort of their own bed.

Max presses Lucas down into the sheets.  Lucas pulls the clip from her hair, pulling Max down by the neck to kiss her deeply.  He throws the clip off the side of the bed with a flourish and Max breaks the kiss to laugh against his mouth.  “I love you,” she says.

“I love you.”  Max has heard Lucas say those words countless times since the very first time when they were fifteen.  Still, there’s something different knowing that now those words are coming from the lips of her _husband_.

Lucas rolls them.  He kisses Max’s cheek and her collarbone.  Her chest, her stomach, her hip.

Max yawns enormously.  Lucas gapes up at her.  “Sorry,” Max says with a laugh.  “Sorry, sorry.”  She squeezes his shoulder.  “Come up here.”

Lucas presses against her and they kiss for an endlessly long moment until Max pulls away and yawns again, right in Lucas’ face.

“Seriously?”

“Sorry.”  Max laughs again, rubbing her weary eyes.  “I’m exhausted.”

“Me too,” Lucas says.  Max’s yawns must be contagious because not a second later Lucas is yawning as well.  He rolls off of her and wraps his arms around her middle.  “Tomorrow,” he says, kissing her neck.

“Good plan.”  Max curls up on her side and feels Lucas spoon behind her.  “Goodnight Stalker.”

“Goodnight MadMax.”

Max sighs and burrows into the pillow.  As she begins to drift off she can’t help but muse on how this certainly isn’t how she’d imagined their wedding night.  Still, she can’t bring herself to mind too much.

They have the rest of their lives together, after all.

-

(March 1995)

It’s raining when the taxi drops Lucas at the front door.  They live in Seattle now, so it’s always raining.  But it’s March, and 3 in the morning, and Lucas didn’t get a wink of sleep on the plane, and he’s grumpy and he trips over a box the Max left _right in front of the door and-_

He just wants to go to bed.

They’ve only been in the new house for two weeks and Lucas has been gone for one of them.  They hadn’t been married longer than a few months when Lucas was offered a job for a high-tech environmental computer science start-up company in Seattle called Environtech.  The opportunity was incredible but a tremendous amount of guilt overwhelmed him at the thought of accepting the job.  Lucas was less than a year out of grad school.  He and Max had just gotten married and started their life together.  They were locked into a lease in their new apartment in Indianapolis. He already had a job working IT in town.  Max was shadowing at a physical therapy clinic downtown while studying for her NPTE.  Their friends were all there.  Their families.  They couldn’t just pick up and move across the country.

But they could and they did.  They’d argued about it for two weeks until Max told Lucas he was a stupid idiot, they could live anywhere, and that she had managed to get them out of their lease in Indianapolis.  She’d also already called Environtech and told them he accepted the job.  She’d applied to shadow at a PT clinic in downtown Seattle and could study for her exam anywhere.  And she’d found a tiny little one bedroom house 20 minutes outside of the city, all they needed was a deposit.

“I don’t know what you’re so afraid of,” she’d said.  “You hate your job here and you deserve so much better.  If the only thing keeping us here is our friends and family, that’s dumb.  They want us to go, and they can always come and visit.  We can’t live our whole life superglued to other people, Lucas.”

“We just got settled in here.  I couldn’t ask you to pick up and move across the company.”

“We’re a team, dummy.  You’re not asking me; I _want_ to go.”  She’d wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed their foreheads close together.  “It’ll be a new adventure.”

Lucas had rested his forehead on her shoulder and whispered, “It _is_ a really great job.”

“Yeah.  It is.  And you’ll be amazing at it.”

So they’d moved.  Lucas isn’t sure he’s ever had more fun than he did on that trip; just his wife, the highway, and the entire contents of their little life together packed up in the car for miles and miles.  With Max at the wheel, they even made it a day ahead of schedule, giving them a little more time to settle into the new house before Lucas’ first day at work on Monday.

Of course, it was just his luck that his very first assignment was to accompany some of the company’s higher-ups to a tech conference in Chicago only a week after officially starting.  He hadn’t been away from Max for longer than a few hours at a time since they’d gotten married in September.  He’d started missing her by the time he’d even reached the airport.

So now, a week later, all he wants to do is curl up next to his perfect wife in their tiny new home and sleep for hours and hours.

He nudges the box in front of the door off to the side with his foot.  The family room is a mess of half-unpacked boxes and piled up belongings.  The kitchen seems to be finished though.  Max had left the light above the sink on for him.  He trudges over to fill a glass of water.  The table in the breakfast nook is littered with notes and Max’s NPTE study books.  Lucas shuffles over to take a peak while he drinks.  He smiles as he notices that Max is several chapters further than she was when he left.  He replaces the cap on a forgotten orange highlighter, shoulders his duffle bag, and tiptoes past the creaky bit in the hallway on his way to the bedroom.  He brushes his teeth and washes his face in the dark so as not to wake Max.  He blearily changes into his pajamas and leaves the unpacking for tomorrow.

Max likes to sleep with the blinds closed so the sun doesn’t wake her up in the morning.  Still, the moon still peaks through the edges of the curtains.  It casts a trail of light across the bed where Max is spread out diagonally across the whole thing, legs on her side of the bed with her face planted in Lucas’ pillow.  Her mouth hangs open and her hair is a messy streak of red across the pillows.  Lucas can’t help but smile.  After all these years she’s still just as adorable as she was the day he met her.  The thought that they’ve been together 10 years now sends a warmth through him that he’ll never get tired of feeling.

“Hey,” he whispers, trailing his hand along her shoulder and over the back of her neck.  “Max.”  She grumbles sleepily but keeps her eyes closed.  “Scooch over.”  Max grumbles some more and moves over the absolute minimum amount of space for Lucas to squeeze into.  He huffs a laugh and lifts Max’s arm up so he can shuffle underneath it, laying on his side facing her.

The second he’s horizontal Max shoves herself into his space.  She throws a leg over his hip to koala him.  The legs of her pajamas had rucked up around her knees and Lucas can feel the warmth of her soft skin through his own pajamas.  Max smashes her face into his chest.  “Hi.”

Lucas chuckles and presses a kiss to her temple, pushing the hair off of her face.  “Hey.”

“Missed you,” she mumbles.

“I missed you too,” Lucas says as Max tilts her chin up for a kiss.

Lucas kisses her, loving how affectionate she gets when she’s sleepy.  When they pull apart it’s not by much.  With their noses and foreheads pressed together their lips are only inches apart.  That suits them both just fine.  “Love you.”  Lucas can feel the way her lips brush against his as she speaks.  They’re married, have been together since they were fourteen, but still, every kiss has the ability to send a kaleidoscope of butterflies aflutter in his chest.

“I love you too.”

Max hums and shuffles ever closer.

With the moon through the curtains and the house quiet except for the quiet pitter patter of rain against the roof, Lucas lets the puff of Max’s breath against his face lull him off to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> I did double check that airbags were a thing in the 80s. Turns out Ford and Chrysler introduced airbags to their vehicles in the mid-80s, but they weren’t required by the government for all cars until 1998. So just assume Max’s car has airbags, please and thanks.
> 
> Also, I looked into the specifics of long-distance calling in the 80s but tbh, it kind of went over my head. 
> 
> Were [open-back, spaghetti strap wedding dresses](https://leannemarshall.com/bridal-1/beulah) a thing in the 90s? I highly doubt it. Leave me alone. 
> 
> Fun fact #1: 52% of couples are too tired to have sex on their wedding night. I find that both hilarious and endearing. 
> 
> I made up Environtech. Keep in mind I know nothing about computer science or environmental studies, but in my head Environtech is a company that designs and manufactures technology to reduce carbon emissions and the like. Also, I googled, and there is apparently a company in the UK called Envirotec. Not the same thing. 
> 
> NPTE = National Physical Therapy Exam
> 
> Fun fact #2: a group of butterflies is, in fact, called a kaleidoscope.


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